Daily demonstrated leadership is a value proposition of the library profession.

As I grow in my own library leadership, I recognize the need for others around us to know this truth. As library workers, we inspire dreams. We thought partner to help others learn more about the world around them and beside them. We encourage folks to take on and take charge of their aspirations. We support people to become what they hope to become.

We are leaders.

For many years now, I’ve been convinced every single library worker is a leader. In my travels as an ALA Emerging Leader, ALA Councilor, ALA Executive Board member, as well as Past President of the Iowa Library Association, I’ve held the luxury of connecting with people who inspire many great things. 

A fun piece of evidence would be the pattern of library workers featured prominently and spoken of reverently during many author visits I’ve attended. Quite frequently a specific library worker will be noted in the speech and credited for setting the writer on their path by including, validating, and encouraging them within the library space. 

Society often leans into the emotional and social strengths of library workers too. We are sought by our stakeholders to facilitate delicate conversations and to partner with community organizations dedicated to addressing workers rights, equitable housing, intellectual freedom, access to the political process, as well as economic, racial, and gender disparities. These conversational containers we construct call for openness, vulnerability, self-reflection, and bravery – typically from relative strangers. As leaders, library workers are asked to curate trust and to honor that gift when it is given by collaboratively seeking public good.  

Almost like maestros conducting before an orchestra of services and resources, library workers schedule bookmobile stops, storytimes, English conversation groups, and cutting edge technology classes to leverage the greatest impact and well-being they possibly can provide to those we serve. If you’re looking for real-time, long-term examples of enterprising, resourceful, and positive professionalism, may I suggest connecting with your local library worker? 

John Qunicy Adams once observed, “If your actions inspire others to dream, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”  If his measurement of leadership is accurate every library worker can add the moniker of leader to their ever growing list of distinguishments. 

Hallway conversations at library conferences invariably impress upon me that leadership happens in libraries every single hour. Reading comments in webinars ranging from artificial intelligence or farm to library food access programming demonstrates the holistic strategy, wide vision, and dedication of our profession. 

However, leadership is heavy. It can be lonely. In our leadership, we can forget to come up for air, to claim our self care, or to seek the necessary resourcing to keep on keeping on. It can feel like a rollercoaster to belong to a profession which is so loved by so many but also drastically mischaracterized at this moment of public discourse.

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s podcast House Calls, recently shed light on this conundrum in “How Do You Build the Confidence to Connect?” with his guest, Jon Batiste. As a Grammy Award winning singer and songwriter, Batiste is universally loved (much like libraries) but leadership and commitment to public good still take their toll. He shared fundamental principles in combating the isolation of leadership by focusing on positive growth and finding strength through connection.

So might we please address some realities about library leadership?

1. You Are Enough

Our work is under great opposition and scrutiny. This is a side effect of our efficacy and influence in the world. If our efforts and impact were not powerful or noteworthy, they wouldn’t be on the radar of those disquieted by their existence. 

Showing up, being your authentic self, prioritizing your communities, and supporting your colleagues is enough. These efforts have more meaning than we acknowledge.

2. We Do This Good Work In Community 

While facing the second-most library adverse bills in the nation as ILA President, folks would often thank me for the long days inside the capitol or for the late night (early morning?) emails updating our membership and affinity groups about advocacy matters. 

During the current legislative session, library workers (leaders) around me underscore their own contributions to the cause. Many conversations in recent years have included some form of “Sam, I wish I could do more or as much.”

Beloved, wherever I go, each of you get on the elevator with me so to speak. Your library orientation courses for incoming freshmen students get on. Your three hour Board of Trustee meetings pouring over policy review get on. Your Teen Advisory craft nights get on. Your stories of challenging censorship get on. 

It may sound kinda cramped inside but you are all in my mind and on my heart. Your leadership informs and influences my own. Leaders inspire other leaders. This is why we gather through conferences, trainings, award ceremonies, and through digital communities! We gather to celebrate, edify, and uplift each other as leaders of a great professional.

Others are joining us too! Just in Iowa’s backyard, Penguin Random House, the ACLU of Iowa, Progress Iowa, Annie’s Foundation, EveryLibrary, One Iowa, Common Good, Iowa Freedom of Information Council, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, and the State of Iowa Education Association are giving their time and talents in recognition of library leaders and their important causes. 

3. Our Stories Are Worth Sharing 

The brand new library in my hometown was contested for years of my childhood. Initially, I was on the oppositional side because of my limited exposure and understanding of libraries or how they lead communities forward.

But . . . when volunteering one summer to meet an undergraduate requirement, a story changed my mind about libraries and then that story changed my life (as well as the trajectory of my career). 

I knew serving on the #LibrariesTransform campaign was essential to my growth as a library leader. I’m living proof that storytelling is magic. Stories helped me fall in love with librarianship. As the Government Affairs Committee chair of the Iowa Library Association, I am now defending the public library levies that I previously did not endorse.

While we do much more showing than telling as library leaders, our stories can be celebrated while recruiting voters to contact their legislators. Our stories can be shared in the form of op-eds in local papers and through radio. Our stories can be recited at legislative gatherings or during City Council meetings. 

Our stories provide a body of evidence that library services provide a $5 to $1 economic return on investment to their communities. Stories can decide the fate of capital campaigns or establish a runway toward proactive library funding.

Stories help us soften the Sisyphean sensation felt in the knowledge that the good work is never done. Our stories remind us of the power we hold, the impact we create, and the leadership we personally provide just by being us and doing us. 

Keep going, library leaders. I’m rooting for you!